Today we honor and commemorate the thousands who were illegally RIFed a year ago today.

Most are still unemployed.
Many have suffered major mental health consequences.
Some have died by suicide.

We see you. We value you. We remember.

GO MAYA!!

If you’re an immigrant, if you’re first generation, if you’re a woman, a scientist of color, trans, or gay, you belong in science. - Maya English, PhD student, GETUP UAW #standupforscience #philadelphiascienceaction

Screenshot of the NIH website page for the NIH fellows CBA, showing the page has been deleted. Superimposed over this is the “there is so war in ba sing se” woman

NIH HR deleted our CBA off the website. Luckily for us, even if the agency says there is no CBA in ba sing se, the union still exists.

NIH Says It Will No Longer Recognize the Research Fellows’ Union NIH leadership said the union “should never have been certified,” in an email to the union’s leadership.

Podcast Jay continues to attack the very people he promises to support, early career investigators. Now he wants to rip up the collective bargaining agreement with the NIH Fellows Union (illegal, BTW). Who's next, the NIH police union? The firefighters?
www.notus.org/health-scien...

A Postdoctoral Associate position is available in the Roeder Laboratory at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY with a focus on researching Polyploidy. Apply by March 1. Please spread the word. apps.hr.cornell.edu/recruiting/f...

Getting asked about how academics can continue to do science & inspire trainees even in the midst of a continued (escalated) assault on science, reason, truth, & human rights. I don’t have great answers.

I would love to hear from mentors about advice they’re giving to trainees/ colleagues.

Conference flyer listing confirmed speakers and attendees

Calling all GTPase enthusiasts! The 2026 Regulation and Function of Small GTPases FASEB conference will be held June 22-24 in Florida, USA.

events.faseb.org/event/Small-...

Image of a cell with enlarged vesicles

How do these vesicles become enlarged? What is their origin? How does the cell sense and resolve them? Come solve these mysteries!

Perfect time to announce that we are hiring for 1 postdoc and 1 tech to start in the Spring-Summer! If you are excited about organelle quality control, innate immunity, and/or neurodegeneration, join us at Cornell in beautiful Ithaca, NY! More info coming soon fischer.wicmb.cornell.edu pls share 🙏

Super excited to join you all!!

So excited to be a part of the team - now time to do some awesome science! 🧫 🔬 💡 🦠

Thanks, Mike!

I’m so sorry I’m just seeing this - so excited to join you all!!

Is there a convergent mechanism for triggering PINK1-Parkin-dependent mitophagy?
Derek Narendra and coworkers find that diverse forms of mitochondrial damage are all sensed by a loss of mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP)
www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

It’s not hard to read this and see this as a blue print for what they want to do for all federal granting institutions, including the NIH

🚨🚨 @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social is a force. Her voice carries power, truth, and courage—threats to the regime.

The only thing authoritarians fear more than a voice they cannot control is a chorus. So let’s give them one: speak up, speak loudly, and don’t stop. Stand with Jenna. ✊🇺🇸

New preprint 🥳! We made photoclickable HaloTag ligands to precisely control protein labeling on living cells. With it, we can do some cool multicolor stuff. Huge congrats to Franzi and all co-authors! Check it out 👇

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I guess I am hitting a nerve, because they just put me on admin leave. TikTok video by Jenna

Trump’s HHS put me on “non-disciplinary” admin leave today. This was retaliation for speaking up. Moves like this are designed to silence us. Let’s not let.

www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8Dteoop/

N.I.H. Worker Who Criticized Trump Health Policies Says She Is on Administrative Leave

NEW: Jenna Norton, an NIH employee who is openly critical of Trump & RFK Jr, has been put on "non-disciplinary" administrative leave. She says the administration is trying to "scare and silence me." An HHS official, asked to comment, called her a radical leftist.
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/u...

No one knows the answer, and that’s the point — Harvard Gazette “Genuinely Hard Problems” pilots novel approach to scientific education.

An remarkable new undergraduate course conceived and taught by our amazing colleague and Dean of Science Jeff Lichtman: "Genuinely Hard Problems" I wish I was an undergrad again!... 🤣🧪🧬🧠
@harvardmcb.bsky.social @harvardbrainsci.bsky.social @harvard.edu

news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.

A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.

A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.

The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

We are in the midst of an all-out attempt to exclude the global majority from science. Watson was clear about where he fell on that. I would trade every single dinner, meeting, seminar, fancy campus, and prestigious donor for my incredible friends to be safer. Their science is worth far more.

Jeremy, I have followed your science advocacy on this platform with respect, but I find this thread deeply hurtful and sad and I am going to tell you why. While my wife did her postdoc at CSHL, she and our many dear friends had to endure the racist rhetoric of this man, which did constant harm

A new, nerdy paper. We figured out (some) of the rules underlying cell-permeability of probes and designed ligands that light up, grab, and move proteins around. Awesome @hhmijanelia.bsky.social x @uwmadison.bsky.social x @stjuderesearch.bsky.social collaboration! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The cut rate labor business of grant funded academic science revealed in one tweet.

Donate to Paul Maddox for Congress in NC 11 Paul is running for Congress because there’s a sickness in Washington, and no one is working to cure it.

Dear all, A scientist from UNC Chapel Hill, Paul Maddox, is running for congress in NC for a seat currently held by a republican. If you care about science (and democracy) please consider donating to his campaign #Standupforscience secure.actblue.com/donate/paul-...

Collaborative. Creative. Impactful. Come join us in Ann Arbor! For more information and application link see jobs.sciencecareers.org/job/675674/f...

IT'S ALMOST HERE!!
#NoKingsDay is around the corner. Gonna be a BIG event at @nihvigils.bsky.social and @27unihted.bsky.social We're going to play TWO SETS - one at the beginning and one at the end.
#fucktrump #punk #punkrock #resist #FightFascism #AntiAuthoritarian #FuckICE #FightTheNazis

I don’t know who needs to hear this but the CDC is being eviscerated right now. America is not going to have any kind of outbreak response capacity after tonight. Americans’ health data is no longer secure. Say goodbye to federal public health in any capacity. It’s a disaster. We won’t recover.